Government ranks IIT-Madras, IIM-Bangalore among top education institutions

“This is the largest ever global exercise in terms of ranking ever done and the first for the country,” Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani said.

ET Bureau|

Updated: Apr 05, 2016, 02.07 AM IST

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NEW DELHI: IIT-Madras, IIM-Bangalore, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences-Manipal and Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore topped their respective categories in India’s first ever ranking of higher education institutions released by the government on Monday.

The rankings under the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) have been carried out in four categories — engineering, management, pharmacy and university — in the inaugural year.

More than 3,500 institutes participated in this edition, the process for which started in December 2015. The objective of the ranking is to facilitate choice and enable higher education stakeholders to make informed decisions. “This is the largest ever global exercise in terms of ranking ever done and the first for the country,” Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani said while releasing the India Rankings, 2016.

“The top rank is a reflection of the commitment of the faculty, staff and students of IIT-Madras towards fulfilling the objectives of the Strategic Plan 2020 that we have set for ourselves,” said Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of the engineering institute. Under the strategic plan, the institute aims to increase its focus on research and collaboration with the industry, among other things. IIM-Bangalore’s dean-programmes, Sourav Mukherji, attributed its top rank in the management segment to its focus on research.

In the universities section, Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Hyderabad, which have been the centre of recent controversies, were ranked third and fourth, behind IISc and the Institute of Chemical Technology-Mumbai. The ranking was done on the basis of parameters such as TLR (teaching, learning and resources); RPC (research, professional practice & collaborative performance); graduation outcome (GO); outreach and inclusivity (OI); and perception (PR). Engineering and management have two categories each – category A that includes research and teaching institutes and category B for only teaching institutes. But no category B rankings were released this year due to discrepancy in data, the NIRF website said.

“This ranking will now make informed choices possible. Parents and students can now easily refer to the rankings while opting for an institute in higher education,” said human resources ministry secretary Vinay Sheel Oberoi.

In case of global rankings like QS and THE (Times Higher Education), the rese arch component is 40% and above. “In NIRF, the weight to research is 30% barring universities where the research weight is 40%,” said Kylie Chiew, regional solution sales director-research management, at Elsevier Research Solutions. The research component is measured in terms of the number of research publications, citations and patents.

“It is a great idea to have a country-specific ranking system, but these ranking systems should be benchmarked with the global ranking as the education system is now global,” said Deloitte India director Rohin Kapoor.

The framework was drafted by a core committee including National Board of Accreditation Chairman Surendra Prasad, IIT-Kharagpur Director PP Chakraborty, IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi and HRD ministry officials. The National Bureau of Accreditation has undertaken the task of doing the ranking exercise, while the validation and checking of data were done by Elsevier.

According to Irani, colleges will also feature in the ranking from next year.

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